Serving Court Proceedings – Could Technology Help?

Alec Fair and Evie Dransfield from our Commercial Disputes team discuss some of the unusual ways that the courts in England and Wales have allowed court proceedings to be served, including using crypto technology and social media, and what the Scottish courts might do when faced with similar requests from parties

Introduction

In the technological era that we now live in, it is worth asking the question: what alternatives are there to serving court documents in hard copy? For instance, could proceedings be served by more unusual methods such as through blockchain or over social media?

In this article, we look at how this question may be answered both in Scotland, and in England and Wales, with reference to a few recent cases that give us an idea of the direction of travel.